Tax

Lawyers will need to review their income arrangements in light of new tax guidelines that could expose them to greater ATO scrutiny, says Pitcher Partners executive director Ashley Davidson.

Allens has lured leading M&A tax lawyer Ellen Thomas from PricewaterhouseCoopers to strengthen the Big Six firm's expertise in mergers and acquisitions and finance transactions.

An appeals court has unanimously rejected the Commissioner of Taxation’s latest bid to block Shell’s $2.3 billion tax deduction for the cost of exploration activities conducted as part of the Browse LNG project off the coast of Western Australia.

Oil company ExxonMobil has appealed decisions by the Australian Taxation Office to refuse deductions on profits from the sale of petrol from the largest oil field in Australia, claiming its taxable profits over four years should be reduced by $181.8 million.

An Airbnb host’s claim for JobKeeper payments has been shot down, with a tribunal saying the accommodation of paying guests at one’s own home did not constitute a business.

Mylan's Australia unit is appealing decisions by the tax office to refuse deductions on interest paid under loans taken out by the pharmaceutical giant to help fund the $1.2 billion acquisition of generic drug maker Alphapharm almost 15 years ago.

Singapore telecommunications giant SingTel cannot claim over $894 million in tax deductible "transfer pricing benefits" for interest paid by a cross-border subsidiary on a loan for the $14.2 billion acquisition of Optus, the Federal Court has ruled.

Accounting giant Deloitte has lost its bid to throw out a former client's lawsuit alleging negligence and fraud over a failed interposition under tax law that occurred more than 16 years ago.

The High Court has granted the ATO’s bid to impose a worldwide freezing order against Chinese property developer Changran Huang, saying the court’s power to freeze assets did not depend on whether there was a realistic possibility of enforcing a judgment in a foreign jurisdiction.

A judge has extended asset freezing orders until next year in a $109.5 million case brought by the tax office against Gold Coast property developer James Raptis and his companies.